WORKSHOP DIS 2024
Designing [Im]Material Inventories of Nomadic Belongings
Monday, 1st July, 2024, Copenhagen, Denmark
“Do you know how “I” say that word?
Arándano.
Isn’t it beautiful? Arándano sounds like a sunny landscape,
Ray of light opening through green vineyards.
Arándanos bajo el sol de verano.
La belleza de un mundo que ya no existe.
The beauty of a lost land I left a long time ago.
I long for this power I never had, but the taste is in my mouth.
Arándano sounds like the taste, more mora than azul.
Morado, purple.
Purpleberry“.Claudia Núñez Pacheco, Blueberry
Calling the nomads, migrants and foreign designers.
We are excited to extend a warm invitation to our upcoming workshop “Designing [Im]Material Inventories of Nomadic Belongings”, where we will engage with and problematise nomadism and impermanence as a possibility for resilience and growth. Through the use of various design methods –including collaborative inventorying, somatic noticing and material fabulations– we will unpack together our experiences of mobility in academia, speaking about the objects we carry and discard, the role of technology in the construction of our changing identities, and the futures we envision for nomadism.
If you see yourself as a nomad, we invite you to sign up for this workshop and bring an object (or a photo of it) representing part of your nomadic experience. Objects can be any of these:
- One you carry consistently
- One you keep out of guilt
- A ghost object (one you regret to have left behind)
- An object that never was (but that you fantasise with)
- Any other.
As an expression of interest, we will ask you to submit a brief narrative (a paragraph or two) around that object to claudia.nunez.pacheco[at]umu.se
Deadline 22nd of June, 2024
We are looking forward to seeing you at DIS2024 in Copenhagen!
Preliminary schedule
In this one-day workshop, we will tell our stories about nomadism and objects, connect with our memories somatically and fabulate futures where nomadism is the rule.
PART ONE: INVENTORYING OBJECTS AND QUALITIES OF BELONGING
- Workshop opening: A quick introduction to the workshop, organisers and participants.
- Introduction through objects
- An inventory of nomadic belongings: Based on our presentations, we will categorise our belongings — what makes us part of them, what absences we carry, and what qualities belongings embody. We will articulate them and generate categories collectively on a whiteboard and/or on paper.
- COFFEE BREAK
- Noticing belonging through our senses: Together, we will explore the notion of belonging more in-depth through felt-sensing.
- Initial discussions: Departing from the objects and felt-sensing activity, we will discuss the role of technologies in our sense of belonging. We will keep completing the inventory with new objects, qualities or insights emerging from noticing.
- LUNCH BREAK
PART TWO: FABULATIONS AND MATERIAL EXPLORATIONS
- Materially exploring nomad futures: Using our inventory and noticing as a starting point, we will generate narratives and scenarios considering nomad objects existing in possible futures where instability is the norm. We will encourage the use of mixed media such as collages, videos, drawings and performances to ideate and share these fabulations.
- COFFEE BREAK
- Share with the group: Show and tell of fabulations and new objects. Document through photographs.
- Back to the inventory: Groups will be invited to add new qualities and objects to their inventories, informed by the new insights from the material explorations.
- Articulate together: We will share our insights on designing for nomadism and impermanence.
- Future directions: We will discuss publication and collaboration plans.
Organisers
Claudia Núñez-Pacheco is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Informatics at Umeå University. Her research investigates how to design from self to others, including how bodily ways of knowing can be used as crafting materials for design ideation, evaluation, insight and empathy. She has embarked on the exploration of foreignness and nomadism from an affective and material perspective http://claudianunezpacheco.com
Janne Mascha Beuthel is a Senior Lecturer at the Creative Technology Department, University of Applied Science in Salzburg, Austria. She combines practices from sewing and textile design and principles from participatory design with wearable technologies. She builds on the creation of prototypes to explore various materials and to speculate on better inclusion and understanding of diverse bodily experiences.
Rachael Garrett is an interaction designer and doctoral researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on Felt Ethics; ethical sensibilities that are enacted and cultivated within design practice. Her work focuses on the design of autonomous technologies such as robots and aerial drones. She also had a keen interest in fashion design approaches for human-computer interaction.
Vasiliki Tsaknaki is an Associate Professor at the Digital Design department at IT University of Copenhagen. Her research combines materials experiences, computational crafts and somatic design methods. Through practice-based studies, she investigates and reflects on intersections of these areas, probing the space of designing for wellbeing and exploring (bio)data as a design material. http://vasilikitsaknaki.com
Nantia Kolidou is a design researcher intrigued by how jewellery practices and digital technology can be combined in poetic ways. Her work contributes to jewellery research by offering new interpretations of digital jewellery through theory and practice and to design research by enriching the role of creative practice to offer methodologies that are rooted in craft, empathy and dialogue. Issues of belonging, identity and connectedness have been a common thread in her creative practice. Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the BA Jewellery, Materials and Design at Sheffield Hallam University.
claudianunezpacheco.com 